The Boy in the Photo by Nicole Trope

‘There are too many places he could be.’

Six years ago, Megan was waiting at the school gates to pick up her six-year-old son Daniel.  The school empties, and Daniel does not appear.  According to Daniel’s teacher, Daniel was picked up by his father Greg – Megan’s abusive ex-husband.  Greg and Daniel vanish: the police can find no trace of either of them.

Six years later, Megan has remarried, and has a baby daughter, Evie.  She’s feeding Evie when the she receives the phone call she has waited six long years for: ‘They found Daniel’.

Daniel is alive.  He’s walked into a police station just a few hours away from where Megan lives.

But Daniel is now twelve years old.  He has secrets. He is angry and confused, and he believes that his mother didn’t want him which is why his father had to take him in the first place.

The story unfolds from both Daniel and Megan’s perspectives, over the six years of Daniel’s disappearance and after their reunion. Can Megan give Daniel the space he needs?  Can Daniel learn to trust his mother?  And what about his stepfather Michael and half-sister Evie?

I started reading this novel and couldn’t put it down. I needed to know how it would end.  I became caught up in Megan’s desire to make things right for Daniel and in Daniel’s confusion.  There were a couple of twists which I did work out, and a couple I didn’t.  And while the ending didn’t take me completely by surprise, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

Highly recommended.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

#AWW2019

It’s Even Worse Than You Think (What the Trump Administration is doing to America) by David Cay Johnston

‘The Trump Presidency is about Trump.  Period.  Full stop.’

Like many others around the world, I was surprised when Donald Trump was elected as the 45^th President of the United States in 2016. I wondered how he would deliver on his promises to ‘Make America Great Again’.  I wondered how he would create jobs.  As Mr Johnston writes, other presidents had an agenda, with supporting reforms, in what they perceived to be the national interest.  But the Trump Presidency seems to be focussed on Trump.

Mr Johnston writes that ‘thanks to Trump the mentally ill have virtually the same gun rights as the sane’.  I find that scary, as I find the influence of the NRA. I am amazed that the emoluments clause of the American Constitution can apparently be interpreted in a way which protects Trump’s private financial interests.  I understand that there are three lawsuits currently in the court system challenging whether Trump has violated the emoluments clause. Is it possible to differentiate the Trump brand from the Trump presidency?   Is Trump representing his own business interests, or those of the American people?

Even more scary to me is the fact that Trump left so many of the nearly 4,000 positions under his control vacant, while filling others with people who have no background in the areas, they are leading. I was surprised to read that the Surgeon General was a physician who owned (presumably in the past) tobacco company stocks.

I kept reading.  And while I was reading, trying not to be distracted by a torrent of Trump tweets, I wondered how the administration could function when Trump had not nominated people (some 368 out of 591 key positions) requiring Senate confirmation.  And looking overseas, to the USA’s engagement with other nations: clearly not important if only 36 of 188 ambassadors were nominated in Trump’s first seven or so months in office.  Now, halfway through 2019, there’s a Trump initiated trade war with China (which is affecting many other countries).

Has Trump created business growth?  Is America greater than it was?  Are more people employed?

I think I’ll stop there.  If you’ve not yet read this book about the Trump administration, you might want to.  Especially if you are an American considering how to vote in 2020.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

 

Daughter of Bad Times by Rohan Wilson

 

‘If you want to remember who you are, you have to live in your mind.’

Like his previous two novels, ‘Daughter of Bad Times’ is set in Tasmania.  But this is not the colonial Tasmania of ‘The Roving Party’ or ‘To Name Those Lost’, this is set in the future.  A future in which people whose land has vanished under the rising sea levels become environmental refugees.  A future in which the Eaglehawk MTC is both an immigration detention centre and a manufacturing plant.  In this facility, refugees work.  They work to pay off the debt they owe for their travel expenses, relocation, food and housing.  And, if they are lucky enough to pay off their debt, perhaps one day they will be granted a visa.

The two main characters in this novel are Rin Braden, whose mother’s company built the Eaglehawk MTC, and Yamaan, her former lover, who is one of the environmental refugees  interned there.  Rin thought that Yamaan was dead, and she wants to try to free him.

I found this novel very uncomfortable to read.  Firstly, because it isn’t hard to envisage a flood of environmental refugees at some stage soon and secondly, because it isn’t difficult to imagine such refugees being exploited and dehumanised.  Not difficult at all.

For much of the novel, Rin Braden comes across as a spoilt rich child. She has manipulated Yamaan in the past, and her interest in freeing him seems to be motivated by her desire rather than his needs.  But Rin is a little more complex than that. I found Yamaan much easier to understand.

What held my attention throughout this uncomfortable read was not so much the characters as the situation.  Yes, I can envisage a private company running detention facilities focussed on profit.  Yes, I can envisage a cynical government enabling such a model, knowing that those seeking refuge will never be able to pay off their debt to secure a visa.  And yes, I can imagine such a government changing the rules so that a visa moves from being a remote possibility to the realms of absolute impossibility.  And how better to reinforce the imbalance of power than to have people doing work which is usually computerised?

Rin wants to secure Yamaan’s release, but she cannot pay his debt.  Only he can do that.  So Rin decides to take matters into her own hands.

I finished this novel profoundly unsettled.  The Eaglehawk MTC is a scary 21^st century version of Port Arthur: environmental refugees have replaced transported convicts but have even less hope.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Women to the Front by Heather Sheard and Ruth Lee

‘The War Office regrets that it cannot use the services of women doctors.’

In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, there were 129 women registered as medical practitioners in Australia.  Many of those women wanted to contribute their skills and expertise to the war effort.  For the military establishment, this was unthinkable.  Despite this, at least twenty-six Australian women doctors were known to have served in World War I.  The women were aged between 27 and 56, and all but five of them were single.

In this book, Ms Sheard and Ms Lee explore the stories of the Australian women who served as anaesthetists, medical officers, pathologists and surgeons between 1914 and 1919.  These women saved hundreds of lives, but the official military records are largely silent about their experiences and achievements.

Because women doctors were officially prevented from enlisting and denied gazetted commissions, they were further disadvantaged post-war:

‘With no official enlistment they could not benefit from government legislation that gave employment preference to returned serviceman and neither could they seek a pension for any ill health resulting from their war work.’

Until I read this book, I was unaware of the Australian women doctors who served during World War I.  I knew quite a bit about the nurses who had served, and about the battles fought.  I knew, in other words, what the official records tell us about who served and where.  Meticulous research by Ms Sheard and Ms Lee provides information about some of the women known to have served.  Details from personal diaries enables us to appreciate, over one hundred years later, the conditions experienced, and the injuries treated.  And these women served at both the Eastern and Western Fronts, in Malta and in London.  Their courage and skill should be recognised.

And after World War I?

‘Despite their war service, which demonstrated that women doctors could exercise the same professional skills as their male colleagues, the post-war period saw a return to the exclusion of women from what Dr Flora Murray called ‘the professional prizes’ in medicine.’

I finished this book wanting to know more about these Australian women doctors.  I felt both inspired and humbled by their service.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

AWW2019

 

Blood River by Tony Cavanaugh

‘A body is found.  And then another.  And another.’

The novel opens in Brisbane in 1999.  The Brisbane River is rising, the weather is hot and stormy, and the rain won’t stop.  And then bodies are found near the Brisbane River.  All men, all affluent, each with a family.  Each has had his throat cut.   The murders seem ritualised and they are gruesome.  There’s a serial killer on the loose, and the tabloid headlines shout: THE VAMPIRE KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!

Detective Sergeant Lara Ocean and her partner, veteran Detective Billy Waterson work the case. Three suspects are identified, and Jennifer White, a seventeen-year-old girl, is arrested and convicted.  But is she really the culprit? The evidence is flimsy, but the murders stop after Jennifer is arrested.

Twenty years later, Jennifer White is about to be released. Lara Ocean is now the Queensland Commissioner of Police; Billy Waterson has retired.  Will the murders begin again?  Can Lara find the truth?

There are a few twists in this story.  I needed to concentrate at times to keep track of the characters as the story unfolds through a shifting first-person perspective.

I grew impatient with the middle part of this novel, between Jennifer’s conviction and release.  But I very much enjoyed the characterisations of Lara Ocean and Billy Waterson.

And the killer?  I suspect that some readers will be as surprised as I was, while others will work it out much earlier.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

The Book of Emmett by Deborah Forster

‘The Browns are hidden children.’

Emmett Brown was an abused child who became an abusive husband and father.  He was emotional and eccentric; his mood could shift suddenly.   A man of contradictions; a lover of literature, convinced his ‘System’ could bend the laws of probability. But when the lottery numbers and the horses let him down and the drink takes hold, he is frequently an ogre.  He could be violent, he might (rarely) tender.  But family members live for the tender moments and try to downplay the violence. His family is his wife Anne and their children Louisa, Rob, Peter, Daniel and Jessie.

The Book of Emmett begins and ends with Emmett’s funeral, and how his now adult children try to reconcile their feelings.  In between, we learn about Emmett and his impact on the lives of family members.  It’s uncomfortable and confronting.

‘Nine years old and there are some truths she knows that aren’t in any book.’

The setting (in a neglected area of Footscray) is important to the story.  People battle to survive, families band together against outsiders but have their own internal rivalries.  The Brown children try to look out for each other, they don’t always succeed.  They grow up, they move out but cannot leave the past behind.

It took me a while to read this novel: I would open the book and step into the story.  I could hear Emmett, sense his violence, hope to see the tender side of him.  I could feel for Louisa as she tried to find her own place in the world, appreciate the conflict the children felt over their feelings for him.  I kept wishing for different outcomes.  And when Emmett’s health fails, the children suffer another form of loss.  Emmett as he was (strong, opinionated and violent) becomes a husk.  His memory may fail, but theirs does not.

‘His memory is draining away even as they speak to him.’

While Anne acknowledges the violence, she says he had to stay with Emmett.  There was nowhere else to go, no other means of support. So many women in abusive and failing marriages feel the same, I’m not sure that they recognise the lifelong impact this will have on their children.

I kept reading. Emmett is complex: I could almost understand Anne’s attraction to him, and his children’s conflicting feelings.  This was Ms Forster’s first novel and was on the Miles Franklin Shortlist for 2010.  I am in awe of Ms Forster’s writing, and unsettled by the story.  I can relate to some aspects and recognise others.  The characters are complex, deftly drawn and human.

‘And then they press on and the dark folds itself around them and then the light retreats like a fallen leaf.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

#AWW2019

Holland House

I love Vanessa’s posts: they give me an opportunity to see parts of Sydney I would never otherwise visit.

It has been a few years since I’ve visited Smithfield. As I travel along Horsley Drive I pass by its landmarks, a Buddhist temple, a front garden planted with tall cacti, and the concrete bunker of the former Smithfield Post Office. I had expected this building to have been demolished by now, but it remains, with a ‘for lease’ sign on its roof, looking as impenetrable as ever under its coat of pale green paint, still broadcasting the postcode and the insignia of Queen Elizabeth from its postal days.

Smithfield is on Cabrogal land, a suburb half residential, half industrial, bisected by the winding path of the Prospect Creek as it flows towards the Georges River. For the most part, the factories are on the north side of the creek, but there’s a smaller area of factories and warehouses on the south side, and it’s into this area I turn…

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The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

‘What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works?

I’ve read elsewhere that Donald Trump didn’t really seem to expect to win the 2016 Presidential election.  I’ve also read that while he did (eventually) have a Transition team (because he had to), once he was elected the work undertaken by Chris Christie was thrown out. So, what happened next?

Across many departments, Trump appointments were made slowly.  And when appointees did arrive, many knew little about their new workplaces. This book is about three Federal departments: Agriculture, Commerce and Energy.  They were first ignored by the Trump Administration, then politicized.  Some examples: in Agriculture, funding of programs including food stamps and school lunches is being slashed; in Commerce, there may not be enough staff to conduct a proper 2020 Census; and in Energy, there may not be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do.  You would think that each of these are important programs.  You would think that decisions with long-term impacts would be carefully considered.  You would think.

‘The fifth risk?  Project management.’

If this is a book about the consequences of short-term thinking, it is also a book about the dedication of many public servants committed to keeping the machinery of government running effectively.

Michael Lewis took the briefings intended for Trump administration officials and this book is the result of his immersion in what the US Federal Government does, how it does it, and why it is important.

At just over 200 pages, this is a short book and a comparatively quick read.  The Trump administration is not the only government in the world focussed on short-term gains at the cost of long-term needs.  It is certainly not the only government that thinks that the private sector will innovate and improve, that government can cut back on research and development.  But cuts have consequences, and those consequences are likely to be far worse if those doing the cutting don’t understand what the purpose of the programs was in the first place.

This is one of several books I’ve read about the election of Donald Trump and his administration.  In many ways, this is a more important read because it is not about personalities and egos, it is about the potential long-term consequences of flawed governance.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

 

The Macarthurs of Camden by Sibella Macarthur Onslow

‘Some early records of the Macarthurs of Camden.

I picked up a copy of this book as a second-hand bookshop, thinking it would be a biography or a history of John Macarthur’s family at Camden.  It’s quite a thick book, and it sat on my shelf for quite a while.  Finally, after reading a few novels set in colonial Australia as well as some history about early European settlement, and visiting the wonderful Camden Museum, I read this book.

First published in 1914, this is not so much an account of John Macarthur’s life as it is an account of his ‘connection with the introduction of Fine Wool into Australia, and of the keen interest he took in that industry and in all that concerned the welfare of the infant colony which he had adopted as his home.’  The book is the work of two women: John Macarthur’s grand daughter Elizabeth Macarthur Onslow, and her daughter Sibella Macarthur Onslow.

The book is based on material from letters and copies of letters found at Camden Park, and notes left by John Macarthur’s sons William and James.  It begins with an account of the voyage to New South Wales written by Elizabeth Macarthur, continues with a description of the family’s early days in the colony. The book also covers John Macarthur’s role in the ‘Rum Rebellion’ which led the overthrow of Governor Bligh, and Macarthur’s subsequent exile in England which lasted for 8 and a half years.  The book continues the Macarthur story until 1831.

If you are interested in the Macarthur family, early European colonial settlement in Australia, or the development of the fine wool industry you may find this book interesting.  I did.  But of most interest to me was Elizabeth Macarthur’s account of the voyage.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

#AWW2019

Tudor Dawn by David Field

‘Henry Tudor is ready to take the throne.’

Three generations of the Tudor dynasty ruled England between 1485 and 1603.  A wealth of fiction has been written about the Tudors: mostly about Henry VIII (and his wives) and Elizabeth I. Some fiction has been written about Edward VI and Mary I, but very little about Henry VII the founder of the dynasty.

Henry Tudor (1457-1509) ruled over England for 24 years from 1485.  He was the son of Edmund Tudor, 1^st Earl of Richmond and Margaret Beaufort.  Edmund Tudor was half-brother to Henry VI of England; Margaret Beaufort was descended from Edward III.  Her descent was illegitimate, through Edward III’s son John of Gaunt and his mistress, Catherine Swynford.   During Henry’s childhood, as the War of the Roses raged, the crown either belonged to Henry VI of Lancaster or Edward IV of York.

In this novel, Mr Field follows the life of Henry Tudor from the age of 12, through his semi-captivity, his years of exile in France, his return to England and his rule as Henry VII.  We see a cautious boy become a cautious man, and then a careful king. I won’t recount more of the history here: Mr Field includes the major events of Henry VII’s reign and prepares the scene for the second of six books which will make up his Tudor saga.

While I’m pleased to read fiction featuring Henry VII, some aspects of the storytelling didn’t work well for me.  Would Henry VII have smirked, I wondered?  Would he have sworn on a bible that he had nothing to do with the death of the royal princes consigned to the Tower by Richard of Gloucester? Perhaps.  On the other hand, I could appreciate Henry VII’s insecurity as first one and then a second rebellion was raised against him.  I could also appreciate some of the challenges he had to meet because years of civil war had depleted the treasury.

I enjoyed the novel and will be interested in reading the second.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Sapere Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith